I’m not sure I like what I’m reading on that SCOTUSblog at the bottom of the quotes section:
“On the question of the Second Amendments application to the States: 23 With respect to Cruikshanks continuing validity on incorporation, a question not presented by this case, we note that Cruikshank also said that the First Amendment did not apply against the States and did not engage in the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases. Our later decisions in Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252, 265 (1886) and Miller v. Texas, 153 U. S. 535, 538 (1894), reaffirmed that the Second Amendment applies only to the Federal Government.”
The District of Columbia isn’t a state, so it’s regulated by the feds. Does this mean that the state and local governments can still make any law they want that restricts our Second Amendment rights?
It took 32 years for the Washington DC ban to be overturned. What took so long.
The 2nd Amendment has never been incorporated into the 14th by the SCOTUS, so I don't believe this decision is binding on the states or on local governments outside the D.C. However the mere fact that the SCOTUS has upheld the originalist view that the amendment guarantees an individual right should have some weight with state and local judges in future gun law cases.
I would like to have seen a decision that would have given the 2nd the same broad application as the 1st, but at least we finally have a SCOTUS ruling that the amendment guarantees an individual right to possess and bear arms instead of merely a state's right to maintain an armed militia as the anti-gunners have claimed for the last 7 or 8 decades. It will still be a long and hard fought battle to get all of the oppressive gun laws repealed or declared unconstitutional, but this decision should give our pro-gun state and local representives and legal eagles a good weapon to fight with.
What the opinion is saying is that if Cruikshank were to come before the Court now, that statement about the 1st Amendment not applying to the states would be DEAD WRONG. Cruikshank has just been glued, tied and nailed to a big post dug into the ground, and the lawyer for Heller is training his 120mm main gun right between Cruikshank's eyes. IOW, the era of anyone being able to argue that the 2nd is inapplicable against states and local governments is nearly over.
That remains to be seen. Incorporation wasn't a factor here so it was not addressed. That will have to come from Chicago or New York's version of Heller.